There are thousands of interactions every day between federal, state, county and city law enforcement and members of the "civilian" population of all hues, persuasions, and socio-economic levels.

Most of those interactions go unremarked because they are at best helpful and at worst, benign. The Ferguson and Staten Island events that are the purported genesis for the recent "peaceful" protest marches are ANOMALIES in the daily unfolding of police work & the criminal justice system.

As the newsmen say, "If it bleeds, it leads." The corollary to that is that good news, the non-bleeding good works done by law enforcement, typically go unnoticed.

Andrew. The protestors are having conniption fits over a very rare event (and with Brown, totally justified) when the real problem, the real threat to young black men, is that other young black men will kill them. That happens every day, usually about 15 times a day. If you want to end injustice, if you want actually to help victims, protest that and help the police bring order to the chaos. It's the beam/speck thing, lack of focus and awareness which turns me off the protestors and allows me to call them idiots. Thank you both for the comments.

"New York City keeps detailed records about the use of guns by police officers on duty. Since 1991, the peak of crime in New York, the number of yearly shooting incidents by NYPD officers has declined by more than two-thirds, from 332 to 105. The number of individuals shot and killed by police officers has fallen from 39 to 16. Something similar might be afoot nationally, but we don’t have the data to know.

"Even if we did, none of this information will make much difference if politicians, activists, and the media keep ignoring it because it doesn't fit the prevailing narrative."